29/09/2016 Scotland 2016

International Trade Secretary Liam Fox says Brexit is a "golden

opportunity" to forge new trade links.

The Remain camp has described that as "delusional".

Whatever the final details of Brexit, how might Scotland be

placed to trade in a different international environment?

The Scottish Government plans to expand early learning

Will the plans work for parents and children?

Oil prices have risen after Opec outlined plans for

Will it mean a boost for the industry in Scotland?

It's now more than three months since the UK voted

In that time we've been told that "Brexit means Brexit" -

but does anyone in Government really know what our relationship

with the EU will look like in the future?

Today the International Trade Secretary Liam Fox

laid out his vision - as John McManus reports.

The prospects for UK industry are key to what happens next. The head

of Germany equivalent to the CBI favours a hard Brexit. That is

complete withdrawal from the common market. Heat disagrees with Liam Fox

that European businesses will want to do a deal. As much as we would

like to uphold good relationships with British customers, it is

extremely important for us not to lose or alienate other European

markets. So whether the UK retains a foothold in the single market in

return for freedom of movement is another option. The Italian prime

minister says the referendum decision must be respected but there

cannot be any favours. The British people and government will decide to

open article 50. I think we will work as soon as possible. Even if

only one way to solve our problem but it will be impossible to give to

British people more rights than the older people out of the EU. Next

week our Prime Minister is expected to address the subject of Brexit at

the Conservative Party conference. Eyes will be peeled for any signs of

a road map for the future. We're joined from Edinburgh

by the chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association David

Frost. He's also a former ambassador,

and has in the past been responsible for UK trade policy,

working closely with Good evening. Do you think we're any

further forward about what Brexit might mean after the speech? I think

we are further forward in one area, one thing which was clear was that

the government intends -- will maintain an open trade policy. They

are clear that free trade means more prosperity and that is strongly

proven as a proposition. It is very important for exporting industries

like whisky that we maintain an open trade policy. Are we any closer on

the future relationship with the EU? Like Norway or Switzerland or

Canada, I am not sure we are further forward on that but it is a big

decision and requires a lot of hard thought. Has he been presumptive

that nothing will change on free trade? In the end country's trade

policy is it's own fear. We can run a liberal free trade policy. We can

have few barriers for trade the UK. His example about North and south

clear shows that but of course we still have to negotiate open

barriers with other countries. -- south Korea. But if you are doing

that from the principle of free trade, it becomes much easier. You

are accustomed in the whisky industry of having different tariffs

for different countries, India being one of the highest. We have enjoyed

the relationships we have had through the European union, what are

your concerns going forward about how difficult it may be to negotiate

different tariffs? Yes, we exported into virtually every market in the

world. Some are easy and some are difficult. India is a good example

of one which is difficult, it has a tariff of 150% just to get into the

market. The EU has been negotiating a trade deal with India for the last

ten years and has not made huge progress. It is difficult because

they have lots of different constituents to satisfy. We will

have to say if the UK can do better. Maybe it will be easier for one

country to do it rather than a group of countries. If Liam Fox could do

that, that would make a huge difference to the Scotch whisky

industry. We have 1% of the Indian market for spirits so just small

change would make a huge difference for us. You are confident that there

could be optimism and you could end up with better deals then? There are

definitely some opportunities there. It would not be straightforward, we

would have to grab attention. Doing lots of trade negotiations at the

same time will be difficult, we will have to prioritise and get people to

do it but it is an opportunity. When the EU negotiators have to satisfy

French farmers, German car-makers and so on, it is easier in some ways

to do your own trade negotiations. You only have to satisfy yourself

about the deal. The experience you have in trade negotiations is quite

unique, how long can they take and how conjugated can they be? They can

be really complex. That is the challenge for the UK. The EU has a

lot of experience in doing trade deals. It has some very skilled

people in doing it. We will be picking up from scratch. I have

great confidence in the system and the ministers and officials doing

it. They have more experience than people sometimes think. If you do a

trade deal in three years, you are doing really well. Most take longer

than that. Most have time to ratify and get approved by parliament since

all so it can take time. With the UK trade deals, we will not have to

spend one year translating them into Portuguese or whatever like the EU

do. We will be able to get on and perhaps speed up ratification. Are

you confident that Scotland's role within the UK will develop,

especially for such an industry like Scotch whisky? We certainly are

doing everything we can to get good healing and we are getting it. We

are talking to all the senior ministers in London. They are all

well aware of our concerns and opportunities and challenges.

Obviously there is a policy-making process going on within government.

The Scottish government is trying to influence that. So our industries in

Scotland. It is too early to say how that will play out but certainly I

feel that the Scottish boys for us and others is pretty well understood

at the moment. Thank you very much for joining us.

More than a ?100 million given to councils to pay for free

childcare has not been spent on funding the programme.

That's according to a new government report.

But the local authority umbrella body COSLA says the report

is a "crude assessment that doesn't reflect the reality".

And the group said it should not detract from the "overriding

success story" of councils delivering free childcare.

The row comes on the day of a key debate on the expansion of childcare

provision in the Scottish Parliament.

This could -- it is also why we have described and will continue to

describe this policy as are most transformative in superstructure

project. This has the potential to change the lives of children and

their families in the short and long-term. The Scottish government

had a laudable aim to deliver 600 of free childcare but that provision

places remains a problem. There are serious pressures within provision

which despite the government commitment to increase the number of

hours are actually putting barriers in the way of flexible access for

parents to choose a place for their child so the net result is that both

choice and flexibility are heavily constrained. What impact is it's

having on families? We hear that parents cannot access Birch funded

childcare places because they are provided on a half-day basis which

means that you might have a place between nine o'clock and ten past 12

but you cannot peter had your child there before nine o'clock or after

the session. For most working parents that is completely unusable.

COSLA said they needed time to get some establishments up and running

and get suitable staff but they are working farm -- forward to working

with partner providers in the future.

Joining me now is Professor of Social Policy at the University

Coming on for four hours a day is not working well for most patients.

It is. It has come because they're trying to achieve two things at

once. Firstly high-quality preschool learning for children and also

trying to provide flexible childcare provision. We do know that actually

you can do both of these things but the date of the childcare which is

about providing a learning environment only needs to be about

20 hours or so weak which is why the level is set at that. It needs to be

of high quality with institutional care rather than home care setting.

We do know as your respondents said that that is useless for working

parents unless you work very close to the nursery and can move your

child yourself to another childcare place. It does not work at all.

Investing in childcare is important for long-term growth and incredibly

important for getting women into work and getting lone parents into

work. Without that kind of free investment in childcare it is

impossible for them to work. As well as benefits for the wider economy,

you are addressing poverty. We know we need to get that investment in

before children start school aged five up to six tissue unaffected

outcome. We also know that getting low income children into that

structured preparation for school makes a huge difference and can be

helpful in narrowing the attainment gap later on. Nothing else post five

years old can do this. It is important to get women into work and

get paid and into work because that is the key to addressing child

poverty and family poverty as well. We know if you invest pounds in

childcare you get ?5 back in terms of the social and economic benefits

to wider society so these -- this needs to be implemented properly to

enable working parents to work. Has there been too much emphasis placed

on trying to increase hours rather than trying to revolutionise

childcare so that there is wraparound available for everybody?

There has been and I think there is a certain investment that has to be

made in the infrastructure. It has to be able to fund the building is

that the facilities and particularly the trained staff because it is the

actual training of the staff that reaches the educational outcomes for

children. Attainment is very low for children who are not in local

authorities. Absolutely. And you do not want to have a situation where

low paid and low skilled workers are providing what is essentially a very

high skilled level of care for children. But at the same time,

there does need to be that kind of flexibility. Other countries and

other areas have managed and even some local authorities within

Scotland have managed it, but what this report shows today is that they

have not managed it consistently across local authorities so some

parents, some working parents and children are losing out. Thank you

very much for coming in. The price of Brent crude oil has

surged over the last 24 hours after the oil producers cartel Opec

agreed a preliminary deal to cut production for the first

time in eight years. The major oil exporting nations

agreed the deal last night, to ease oversupply, which has been

keeping prices low. To discuss what this might mean

for the North Sea oil industry, we're joined by Mike Tholen,

who's upstream director A very good evening to you. Good

evening to you too. It is hard to know whether at the moment this

definitely will happen and then if it does happen whether it will lead

to a rise in the oil price, but let's assume that will happen and we

might start to see Brent crude going up. It already has in the last day.

What will the North Sea be doing to prepare for that? Hasn't already

been preparing for that? I think it has been preparing for the current

low prices in many ways. It would be nice to see oil sitting above $50

rather than below it. But the industry is not picking its future

on what the oil price does now. It has to become more competitive. That

will do well at a whole range of prices in the years ahead. And in

terms of jobs, do you think we could start to see a slowdown in the

number of job losses we have been seeing? I certainly hope so. I think

of the industry can get confidence that it knows what they all prices

doing and it starts to stabilise rather than being as volatile as it

has been over the past year or so, then many companies can start to

have a little more positivity about the future. The whole issue is how

we get companies to begin to drive investment again. In a industry that

is becoming increasingly competitive. And do you think

exploration might be one of the key benefactors of this it the price

starts to certainly climb again? Because people will be blocked in to

spend the money exploring unless they are sure they will get a decent

return. Indeed, and I think exploration will very gently feel

the benefits. A lot of other things are going on in exploration so it

means that the rice -- that companies have a little more cash to

spend. But it will take time to get that confidence and to be

comfortable. The shock of the fall. It was so rapid. How well is the

industry now adjusting to that? And how much harder has been to plan

ahead? Well, what we have seen many times before is that oil prices have

fallen. Certainly it has fallen as fast as it ever has. Probably the

biggest problem is the length of the downturn. Companies have moved from

just beginning to adjust to price changes to really starting to build

a different business to cope with a much more competitive environment.

We are seeing costs come down and the industry, partly because of tax

changes, partly because of cost changes, is any much more

competitive position. And on the subject of decommissioning, that

continues and provides work and some revenue as well. We also reported

today about this new Masters course in decommissioning at Aberdeen

University. Is this another sign of the abolition of the industry? Is it

adjusting to the changes? I think to a measure it is. Exploration is the

start of things in decommissioning a laugh in many ways is the end of

things. And if we can get a specialism across the full

life-cycle, all of those skills are highly exportable for Scottish

companies all around the world. We do not already that is really good

in terms of managing and operating assets. If we get good at

decommissioning, that is a whole new opportunity for us. We have been

accustomed to Opec being slow to make any changes and decisions. Does

the industry does tend to be trying to continue to do something and

trying to maybe insulated itself a bit from that big world picture? I

think you shouldn't let your business be dependent on the future

oil prices. Everyone knows that. Higher prices are probably better

for us but the whole course of the last 18 months has met the industry

has got a lot fitter. It is keen to not that fitness, even if the price

rises in little. No one is expecting prices to soar. No one is expecting

prices to be what they were 18 months ago. Mike, thank you for

joining us this evening. What were the hot topics

at First Ministers Questions today? Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale

focussed on plans to That follows a vote on the issue

earlier this week, resulting For Conservatives, Ruth Davidson

chose the topic of fracking, and accused the First Minister

of turning a blind eye to shale gas It is quite possible that shale Gas

from the rest of the UK will get the go-ahead soon if local communities

back it, and if it does, providers say that much of that Gas will go to

Grangemouth and will end up in a National Grid powering many Scottish

homes. So we could end up with a ban on Scottish but with Scottish homes

reliant on in this Gas to keep the pipes warm. Is the First Minister

entirely comfortable with that? Well, I know the Scottish

Conservatives are a party controlled by London but in the era of

devolution, I think it is right that we take the decisions about fracking

in Scotland here in Scotland and in our national parliament and that is

what we will continue to do. Before the election, the SNP told people

their local services were safe. Even the First Minister did it on the

front of the Greenock Telegraph. If the vote of this Parliament elected

by the people of Scotland doesn't make the First Minister keep our

promises, just what will? Week after week, we have the Labour Party

accusing the Government of overriding local decision-making.

Today, what they want to do is override local decision-making. We

will do the right thing and it is because of this Government, let's

never forget this. It is because of this SNP Government that we still

have an accident and emergency in Monklands, we still have an A

service in error. -- in Ayr. And with me this evening to talk

about some of the day's news is the former Labour adviser

Paul Sinclair and from Oxfam UK - We will begin with the fracking top

today. We covered this earlier this week, the arrival of shale Gas to

Grangemouth. Is there a level of hypocrisy in this arrival? We do not

want to extract it ourselves but we are happy to bring it in and use it.

I think there is a thing about becoming slightly hysterical about

fracking. If fracking is safe, then we should do it. If it is not, then

we should not. Somehow, it has become demonised. We live in a

strange country where our biggest industrial complexes actually

Faslane, although we are anti-nuclear weapons. Our second is

Grangemouth, although we are anti-fracking, but it keeps alive on

fracked Gas coming from the United States. It is in the critical. I

think we need to take a step back and stop using it as a slogan and

work out whether fracking is good or not and if it is it could be a very

good thing for the Scottish economy. We are awaiting the results of those

ports in the Scottish Government is waiting for them. In the meantime,

is it hard to have a rational discussion about it? Without it

becoming political. The thing is, it is all about the politics of 129 M

is he's in Hollywood. It is seen that there is a slither of greener

people who would be against fracked, which bought the SNP and the Labour

Party would like to go against. It is not about what is best for the

Scottish economy. It shouldn't be about the politics when the science

is so incredibly clear. The science tells us that we need about 80% of

existing reserves of fossil fuels to stay in the ground and that includes

Gas. So if all we are doing is by using natural Gas and shale Gas is

taking the count down the road, but it is doing it in a destructive way.

What we need to do is get on the front foot and embrace renewable.

You said earlier that the master 's degree in decommissioning in just a

fantastic example of the North Sea industries and the academics up

there in press in the ship to a low carbon economy that we need to get

on the front foot with so very quickly because the science is

damning. We can't keep taking these issues down the road and playing

politics with them. There is no ties. The science is clear. At

religious art carbon emissions, the aim of being deniable honour -- the

aim of being reliable on renewables in 2020, we are not far away from

that. Now, and it is great to see businesses such as Aberdeen

University embracing the economic opportunities that will come with

the two missing -- with decommissioning. I just wish there

were more of them. Let's go on to Brexit. What did you make of that? I

thought it was an appalling speech. I thought is opening line about the

date in the 18th-century where Adam Smith published the Wealth of

Nations was complete nonsense. I thought it was delusional. I would

agree with Nick on that, Nick Clegg. But my biggest distress is that I

found out that actually I expected it to be slammed down by number ten

but never ten agreed with that. I think there are any horrible

situation and I do not want to bring up the referendum in 2014 but one of

the things I fear about the referendum in one of the reasons I

bolted Noel was that we would be into the unknown and a lot of the

promises we made will not happen. We are finding that it is real now. I

am there to take the result on the chin and make the best of it, but

they are still coming up with delusional nonsense, and that I

think is very fearful and that is a big problem for Theresa May going

forward. What did you think of what Liam Fox had to say? It remains

quite general. We are still lacking in detail. And I think that is the

challenge that we are in this zombie no man's land where everyone knows

there is a massive change coming but no one knows what it will look like

or how to prepare for it or how to get ready for it and I think that is

very unnerving, the longer it goes on, and also the differences of

opinion even amongst the three key ministers in the Brexit team. They

are very diverse in what they are putting on the table. What worries

me is that in this debate around trade and whether it is a soft or a

hard Brexit is that what gets squeezed out of that conversation is

that some of the root causes are ignored. We know that the UK is one

of the most unequal of all of the developed countries and we are

seeing just so many people feeling that the current economic system is

not delivering for them and until we again get on the front foot and

start debating those issues and start to doc about an economic

system that the needs of the people who are not feeling well served by

the current situation, then we will just be going around in circles and

back to where we started from. I think that is one of the problems

with the referendum. People end up not voting actually on the issue.

They bought about something that is upsetting them a great deal but the

one thing that we can take from Liam Fox today is that when anybody

starts a speech by telling you we are on the brink of the Golden age,

they are talking nonsense. Let's move on to childcare, because that

was the subject of a long debate in the Scottish Parliament today. We

have been hearing about issues with the funding that is being given to

local authorities. What concerned me about the way it was being reported

and I looked at that report that came out from the Scottish

Government is that actually I think the way it was reported missed the

bigger story. There was a factor in there saying that 80% of third-party

employees, so employees delivering childcare through partner services,

80% of those front line staff are paid less than the living wage. That

is deeply problematic. We are any country that understands the

importance of the living wage and we have a Government that understands

the importance of it and most local authorities are signed up as living

wage employers and then 80% of people who are looking after and

nurturing and educating our children are paid poverty wages, and that is

not acceptable. I was really disappointed that that was not the

biggest Tory in this debate today. Yes, there is a real double standard

going on. -- that was not the biggest story. It is one of the

biggest failures in politics. As whether it is childcare or the nub

of nurses, the nub of doctors or the number of policemen, we have this

option, one party offering a certain amount of hours, but actually what

you heard in pockets of today Bosman debate where people saying that this

was not practical for what people actually need and is kind of... Take

the constitutional question out of it. We do not have a terribly far

right Tory party. We do not have a terribly far left Labour Party and

we have an SNP with lots of different views. Why can we not come

to a consensus about something that would actually work? Rather than

making it some kind of option in debate that we have to have between

the parties. It has to be more radical. Absolutely. And more

flexible, to deal with the way that working lives are today. It is not

just about kids being in primary school but so that it understands

shiftwork, for example. Which is becoming more and more common.

Indeed. I'm back on Monday

at the usual time. So do please join me then,

bye bye.